Gene Simmons apologizes after claiming Prince ‘killed himself’

Kiss bassist Gene Simmons has apologized after alleging during an interview with Newsweek that fellow musician Prince had “killed himself” with drugs.

In a statement issued through his Twitter account Tuesday evening, hours after the Newsweek interview appeared online, Mr. Simmons said he was sorry for remarks he made about Prince’s passing, which he attributed to drug addiction.

“I have a long history of getting very angry at what drugs do to the families/friends of the addicts. I get angry at drug users because of my experience being around them coming up in the rock scene. In my experience they’ve made my life, and the lives of their loved ones, difficult,” said Mr. Simmons, 66, who has played bass and sung for Kiss since the band’s inception in the early 1970s.

“I was raised in a culture/crowd where drug addicts were written off as losers, and since that’s the narrative I grew up with, it’s been hard to change with the times,” Mr. Simmons wrote. “Needless to say, I didn’t express myself properly here — I don’t shy away from controversy, and angry critics really don’t bother me at all. If I think I’m right, I’ll throw up a finger and dig my heels in and laugh. But this time, I was not. So, my apologies.”

In the Newsweek interview, Mr. Simmons celebrated Prince’s musical legacy but accused him of substance abuse.

“I think Prince was heads, hands and feet above all the rest of them,” Mr. Simmons said. “I thought he left [Michael] Jackson in the dust. Prince was way beyond that. But how pathetic that he killed himself. Don’t kid yourself, that’s what he did. Slowly, I’ll grant you … but that’s what drugs and alcohol is: a slow death.

“His drugs killed him. What do you think, he died from a cold?” asked Mr. Simmons.

Prince, 57, was found unresponsive inside his Chanhassen, Minnesota, estate on the morning of April 21 and pronounced dead at the scene shortly after.

The cause of the musician’s death has not yet been determined, but a longtime lawyer told Newsweek that allegations of addiction were “foolish” and denied the singer had been “drugged up” prior to his death.